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10,000 hours later: the PGA Tour?

D. Levitt <http://www.freakonomics.com/author/stevenlevitt/>

01/12/2012 | 11:28 am

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Last spring, I jokingly (okay, maybe half-jokingly) wrote about my quest to

make the Champions

Tour<http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/09/what-are-my-chances-of-making-the-ch\

ampions-tour-or-at-least-hitting-the-golf-ball-really-far/>,

the professional golf tour for people over the age of 50. In that post, I

made reference to the ideas of *Anders sson*, an old friend whom *Dubner

* and I wrote about in our *New York Times*

column<http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/05/07/freakonomics-in-the-times-magazine\

-a-star-is-made/>

back

in 2006, and whose ideas later became the centerpiece of a number of

popular books. Anders is the one who thinks that talent is unimportant.

Oversimplifying a bit, he argues that with 10,000 hours of the right kind

of deliberate practice, more or less anyone can become more or less

world-class at anything. I’ve spent 5,000 hours practicing golf, so if I

could just find the time for 5,000 more, I should be able to compete with

the pros. Or at least that is what the theory says. My scorecards seem to

be telling a different story!

It turns out I’ve got a kindred spirit in this pursuit, only this guy is

dead serious. A few years back, twenty-something *Dan McLaughlin* decided

he wanted to play on the PGA tour. Never mind that he had only played golf

once or twice in his life and had done quite poorly those times. He knew

the 10,000 hour argument, and he thought it would be fun to give it a

test. So he quit his job, found a golf coach, and has devoted his life to

golf ever since. So far he is 2,500 hours into his 10,000 hour quest,

which he chronicles at thedanplan.com.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanhealy/4899059011/>

Bandon Dunes golf course. (Photo: Healy)

I happened to find myself at Bandon Dunes, the golfers’ haven on the Oregon

coast, a while back. I met Dan there, and we had the chance to play 36

holes together. We had a great time, and it was fascinating to get to know

him and hear about his approach.

The golf pro who has been guiding him had a very unusual plan, to say the

least. For the first six month of Dan’s golfing life, he was only allowed

to putt. We are literally talking about Dan standing on a putting green

for 6-8 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, hitting one putt after another.

That is nearly 1,000 hours of putting before he ever touched another club.

Then he was given a wedge. He used just the wedge and the putter for

another few months, before he got an 8 iron. It wasn’t until a year and a

half into his golfing life – 2,000 hours of practice – that he hit a driver

for the first time.

I understand the basic logic of starting close to the hole (most shots in

golf, after all, do occur close to the hole), but to my economist’s mind,

this sounds like a very bad strategy for at least two reasons. First, one

of the most basic tenets of economics is what we call diminishing marginal

returns. The first little bit of something yields big returns; the more

you do of something, the less valuable it is. For example, the first ice

cream cone is delicious. The fourth is nauseating. The same must be true

of putting. The first half hour is fun and engaging. By the eighth

straight hour, it must be mind-numbing. I just can’t imagine a person

could focus that single-mindedly on putting, not just one day, but for

months and months on end. Second, my own experience suggests that there

are spillovers across different aspects of golf. Things you feel when

chipping help inform the full swing. Sometimes I can feel what I should be

doing with a driver, and that helps me with my irons. Sometimes it is the

opposite. To be putting and chipping for months without any idea what a

full swing is – that just seems wrong to me.

So is the strategy working? Dan is 2,500 hours into his experiment, he is

still really excited about golf, so that is a victory in and of itself. He

is an 11 handicap, which means he is about 15-16 strokes per round away

from being good enough for the PGA tour. That means he has to shave off

about one stroke for every 500 hours of practice from here on out. I

suspect he can keep that rate of improvement for the next few thousand

hours, but it will be a tough haul after that.

Whatever the outcome, I’ll be rooting for him. Partly because he is a nice

guy, and partly because he promised me free tickets to the 2016 U.S. Open,

but only if he qualifies.

via

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a-tour/>

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